Chapter Text
No one is perfect. Gajeel knows this. Perfection is an ideal, never to be met at the risk of raising expectations too high.
No one is perfect. But he thinks that Levy is pretty god damn close. He thinks it now, as they sit together in the library, wrapped in its protective silence. There’s so much to do to prepare for the battle against Zeref, and so very little time to do it, that he knows he shouldn’t be wasting any of it now on thoughts that won’t protect either of them when the time comes.
But Levy is close to perfect. And she’s right here.
And she’s his.
Gajeel watches as her brow furrows, her golden eyes flicking back and forth across the page covered in nonsensical letters that only she can work out as she deciphers the magic that will help save them all. Even that mark is perfect, its depth creating a perfect line of concentration between her eyebrows.
Leaning into the palm of his hand with his chin, he lets his gaze draw itself along the perfect point of her nose, following her profile to the full of her lips that move silently around the words on the pages before her.
He loves her, he thinks.
No. That isn’t right. He knows. Has known it from the moment that she found it in herself to forgive him for all that he had done. For the past that he had been dealt.
For the things he had done to her.
He loves her, and the perfect rise of her cheeks, colored with a blush caught between the perfect shade of red wine and crushed roses.
Gajeel loves her, and the perfect spattering of freckles that he can connect into constellations across the bridge of her nose.
He loves the perfect curve of her face, framed by her cornflower hair like a painting of the most perfect day.
No one is perfect, but Levy’s perfect to him.
Gajeel’s eyes continue to roam, cataloging every piece that makes up everything that she is when he feels his heart go cold as she reaches up to push a stray lock back behind her ear. It’s a subtle movement that exposes just a bit more of her skin, revealing a mark that stands out like a slice of moonlight against her lily petal skin.
The scar stretches a couple inches from her hairline, usually obscured by the blue strands, but it always weighs against his shoulders even when he doesn’t see, because he always knows.
Always knows that it’s marring Levy’s perfect skin as a reminder of how easy it would be for her bright light to be snuffed out, because he’d been the one to put it there.
The sight of it now makes his heart stutter as it beats an ugly rhythm into the back of his sternum, sending his pulse screaming through his ears and deafening him in the otherwise quiet library.
No one is perfect, including Levy, because he had made sure she wasn’t with his own two hands.
“Gajeel.” Her voice is a melody that pulls him kicking and screaming from his thoughts as his vision focuses on her warm honey stare that is now fixed on him.
“Yeah, shrimp?” He asks, voice a shade off of breathless. It’s a struggle every time he sees the scar to remind himself that the only one left to forgive, is himself.
“You okay?” Levy asks quietly, setting the book down as she drops her palm onto the back of his other hand, kneading her thumb reassuringly into the side of of his hand. The touch anchors him as he drags a steadying breath between his teeth and nods.
By way of answer, he pulls his hand free from her grasp, moving it slowly to palm at the back of her neck as he leans in. Lilac and ink fills his senses as his nose brushes against her hair and he presses his lips gently to the scar. It’s a chaste kiss, barely there and featherlight, but he hears her breath hitch as he drags his thumb lazily against her escalating pulse.
“I’m fine, Lev,” he breathes into her temple, smiling as he breathes her in.
No one is perfect, he thinks as he pushes back into his seat and finds himself pinned beneath her sunlit smile. But Levy is pretty god damn close.